


Love Language

by estriel



Series: August Break 2019 [7]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 23:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20161675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estriel/pseuds/estriel
Summary: Javi is learning Japanese. Yuzu doesn't know why, but he likes it all the same.





	Love Language

**Author's Note:**

> Today's prompt is _curved_.

“You know, this is almost as hard as getting together with you had been,” Javi says, adjusting his glasses and twirling the pencil in his hand. Watching Javi like this makes Yuzu feel as if he had just drunk a cup of tea, warm from the inside out. Javi’s hair is mussed up from where he’s been running his hand through it too much, his glasses are a bit askew, and his pencil is slightly chewed up at the end as he pores over his workbook for hiragana.

And he is right, of course. The road to this – _them_, together – had hardly been a straight one. It had been more like one of ice dancing’s pattern dances, all intricate curves and turns and skirting one another so closely they nearly crashed and burned several times. Looking back, they had both been idiots – an honest, open conversation could easily have gotten them there much sooner.

Instead, it had taken years of significant glances, lingering touches, and unresolved locker-room encounters that often felt like one could slice the tension with a knife… and, in the end, it had taken Javi moving away from Toronto for both of them to realize that they really couldn’t do this without one another. Not just skating, _life_. It had all been worth it, of course, Yuzu thinks as he watches Javi bite his lip in concentration while he draws row after row of the kana in his workbook, muttering to himself under his breath.

“You don’t have to learn this, you know,” Yuzu reminds him once again. It’s not like Javi will need Japanese to talk to him. Yuzu’s English is better now than ever before, and all of his family speak varying levels of English, too.

Javi always grumbles about how hard Japanese is, but he keeps pushing forward, working his way through the syllabaries like he used to work his way through step sequences until he could nearly do them in his sleep – stubbornly, relentlessly, and with utter dedication.

“I know,” Javi says, writing out a sentence that Yuzu can spot no errors in from where he’s sitting across from him. He touches Javi’s foot with his own under the table, feeling proud and more than a little in love. Javi looks up again, eyes bright. “But I want to.”

“I don’t really know why,” Yuzu tells him and reaches across to smooth Javi’s curls into place a little. Javi has been at it for almost a month now, and Yuzu is still not sure where his sudden decision to study Japanese originated. Javi had not bothered when he was involved with Miki for three years, and _her _family does not speak any English. “But I like it,” he adds when Javi gives him an enigmatic smile.

It all becomes clear a few months later, on their anniversary. Javi is nervous, more nervous than Yuzu has ever seen him, including at the Olympics. And someone else might have found it strange, or amusing, that Javi has made _notes_ for this, a small sheet of carefully written out text that shakes like a leaf in Javi’s hands. Yuzu just finds it doubly endearing.

Javi barely needs the cheat-sheet anyway. He stumbles over a few words, and his pronunciation is still a little dreadful, but god, Yuzu doesn’t care. Because Javi is down on one knee, telling him the sweetest, most beautiful things in trembling Japanese, and looking up at Yuzu like he never wants to look at anyone else in his life.

By the time Javi makes it to the _ai shitemasu yo_, dropping his notes in favor of pulling out a small ring box out of his pocket, Yuzu is in tears, and nodding furiously.

He sinks to his knees and kisses Javi, kisses all of his face, his hands, sobs into his neck. They end up a tangled heap of limbs on the soft rug in their living room, laughing and crying and deliriously happy, and Javi somehow manages to slide the narrow band of white gold onto Yuzu’s finger.

“I will. I will,” Yuzu mumbles over and over, he’s not even sure in which language. And then he laughs as the thought occurs to him: “I guess it’s my turn to learn Spanish now.”

“Sí,” Javi says, and shuts him up with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know that fanfic writers as a species live off of comments? So let me know what you thought. <3 (I am super slow with responding these days, since I have a full-time job, time-consuming hobbies, and this daily writing madness going on... But I read all of them, smile, and appreciate them like you wouldn't believe. And I will answer all of them, eventually.)


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